Carrera Digital 132 Slot Cars Racing
Posted by John on May 16, 2009
Digital 132 with Automatic ‘ghost’ cars
Duration : 0:0:52
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Archive for the ‘carrera slot car’ Category
Carrera Hot Pursuit Slot Car Race Set Review
Posted by John on April 6, 2009Carrera’s new digital 132 line which refers to the scale of the cars included. All slot cars in the past used to be analogue. Thanks to its conversion to digital, slot cars have now evolved as models packed with more features making them more realistic and closer to real racing. The new system accommodates up to six drivers on the same track dueling simultaneously at full speed. With the touch of buttons, you can digitally control your individually coded cars. The feel of racing gets even better for having real time acceleration, braking, high speed passing and wide drifts. Let’s get to know one of Carrera’s new slot car models, the all new Carrera USA Digital 132, Hot Pursuit Race Car Set
You may be caught surprise when you see a large package of Carrera USA Digital 132, Hot Pursuit Race Car Set
Have patience during the building process of your own Carrera slot car. When you finally finish building the track, congratulate yourself and your kids (if they lend a hand) for a job well done. The fully assembled Hot Pursuit car set looks so huge and magnificent towering at 9.22 x 5.54 feet!
Now that the track is full assembled, the fun begins. The layout and the theme of the set are appealing especially the thrilling idea of car chases. You get two cars with the track: a Ford Mustang GT 2005 Highway Patrol car and a Chevrolet Corvette C6. The Mustang’s police car actually lights up for the fact that most cars come with mere front and rear lights that doesn’t work. These cars are quite quick so you have to be careful not to deslot them. I noticed that the car stick to the track really well because of the installed magnets underneath the cars.
Changing of lanes is one press of a button away. It is a simple thing to do just by pressing the lane changing button down on the controller and your car will change lanes at specific locations on the track. The lane change is long so you can take it at a pretty high speed. When it comes to the look of the new models of Carrera, Hot Pursuit cars is detailed that some collectors purchase them to add in their car collection.
Another advantage that Carrera has is that you can set up a pace car or an Autonomous Car which means the car can drive itself. The Autonomous car is great if you don’t have anyone to race with. You can also buy a pit lane as an accessory which allows you to pull in there to virtually fuel your car up. The pace car will also pull in there at the start of a race. In a nutshell, I recommend Carrera USA Digital 132, Hot Pursuit Race Car Set
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Carrera Welcomes Racing Sets and 1:1 Scale in International Toy Fair 2009
Posted by John on February 9, 2009The International Toy Fair celebrates 60 years with many anniversary highlights, parties and special events in store. If you happen to be in Nuremberg since February 5 up to the 10th, be sure to drop by the world’s largest toy fair for this year 2009 taking place in Germany. Guess who is one of the 2,750 exhibitors of the most-awaited toy fair in the world?
No other than Carrera Toys participates in the world’s leading fair for toys, hobby and leisure time articles. The fair in Nuremberg, Germany holds 2,750 exhibitors from 60 countries with more than 80,000 trade visitors from 120 countries. Carrera Toys unveils numerous exciting new products sure to enthrall aficionados of this hobby.
With fantastic licenses, high-quality boxed racing sets and eye-catching, popular vehicles, the spellbinding Carrera motor-sport adventure will continue to ensure increasing retail sales in 2009. All of the new products will be presented at the press showcase on February 4, 2009, between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. and at the fair from February 5-10, 2009, in Hall 6, at Stand C-35.
For the first time at the Spielwarenmesse International Toy Fair, Carrera will also be hosting the Carrera “Gentlemen’s Race” on the two first days of the trade fair. The point is to let the gorgeous and charming “Carrera Chicas” invite members of the audience to take part in a race. The winners, however, are those who don’t just look like a gentleman but act like one as well - with their courteous driving and by letting the lovely ladies win. As a reward, the gentleman of the hour can look forward to an extra special Carrera miniature hand controller-key ring. As part of the competition, all drivers can enter a draw after the race to win the strictly limited “Carrera Chica” Porsche 911 in 1:32 scale.
In 2009, Carrera will remain true to its proven product strategy and will be presenting popular vehicles from Germany and abroad, covering all important motor sports themes from Formula 1 to the Le Mans-Series right up to the DTM German Touring Car Championships.
In the meantime, here are the new eye-catching car models of Carrera arriving soon to a retailer near you.
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A few cool German slot car sites
Posted by John on November 15, 2008I’ve recently been looking at a couple of German-language Carrera sites using Google Translate. The translation isn’t great, but it’s usually good enough to figure out what the author is trying to say.
Links to these sites below are run through the Google translator - check them out.
Carrera Rennbahn - This site has a ton of info, especially about all the various products Carrera has made over the years. Be sure to check out the beautiful Carrera paintings!
Carrera4Fun.de - This site has TONS of info on the Carrera Universal 132 track system that was manufactured from the mid-1960s until 1984. Unfortunately, the frame-based navigation system makes it hard to get around when it’s pumped through the translator. Here’s the German link - Carrera4Fun.de in German. You may want to navigate in German to see the pictures and plans and then use the Google Translate link above to get the English version of the text.
Slotkeller - This site isn’t Carrera specific, but check out the great shots of their wooden track! By the way, I’m pretty sure Google is translating the German word for track to “train”.
Carrera Go 1/43 Police Chase and Nascar Combined
Posted by John on November 3, 2008
Ok, here are some pics of the pool table layout I had up for the last couple of weeks.
It was a combination of the original Carrera Go Police Chase set that I bought along with the Carrera Go Nascar set I picked up at Toys R Us a couple of weeks ago.
Here’s the plan:
I didn’t think I would like the loop before I bought it (one of the reasons I bought the police chase set to start - no toy pieces), but it carried some novelty for a while. It basically acts to lengthen the straight, which I like because I’m pretty space-limited at the moment, especially in my build space for these Carrera Go layouts - my bar-size pool table.
But after running this layout for a while, it is a bit gimmicky. I’d prefer they included some different radius turns instead. More on that in a few.
Here’s a shot of the assembled layout:
The track actually ends up being fairly technical. The banked crossovers can be a real challenge at speed and the significant elevation changes make for some interesting and varied racing. If you have this pair of sets or similar, I’d give it a try. You will need some books or something to support the turn on the backside of the loop, unless you’re also building on a pool table 
Further impressions on the Carrera Go track system
After spending a couple of weeks messing with it, I’m still pretty happy with Carrera Go track. I’ve had a couple of the little track connectors break, but the sets come with a dozen or so extra so it’s not too big of a deal. But, I’d prefer it were engineered to not break at all, and it does seem sometimes that on the joints where they’re needed most they pop out.
The only other issue I’ve seen is some cars having minor issues with the inside lane of the banked turn, but usually tweaking the braids a bit will get over this (as long as you carry a little momentum through them).
The lack of turn variety is the biggest thing that will keep me from really getting into this scale. Yeah, it seems that there is ONE larger turn radius, but they are hard to come by. There are a few sets that have 180 degrees worth, but I haven’t seen them in the US, and I’ve only found one or two places that stock add-on packs of them (and I don’t know the vendors).
I’ve also looked a bit at the SCX product (but haven’t bought any of their track … yet!). They seem to be taking an approach that will please the enthusiasts a bit more, with no loops or wall-climb pieces. And they have a set that features more of the larger radius turns, but they have the same problem - 2 sizes of turns and that’s it.
I haven’t tried no magnet on this scale yet, but I’ll probably dump the magnets on the Nascars at some point and see how they slide.
You sure can’t beat the price. For less than $150 bucks, I’ve got enough track to create a bunch of different layouts and a few new cars to play with. It’s definitely a smaller investment than 1/32 and 1/24 and still can provide a ton of fun.
Carrera Go Police Chase Impressions
Posted by John on October 14, 2008
I received my Carrera Go Police Chase set over the weekend.
Initially I’m very impressed with the quality of the track and parts. For a product that is considered “toy-class,” the assembly takes a little bit longer than I would have expected, and it seems like some of the parts could break fairly easily if they were handled roughly. The track has a rigid feel to it as opposed to more flexible tracks like Scalextric.
Putting the track together there are tabs on the end of each track piece that slide into one another along with the connectivity tabs. Once that goes together, there are clips that go on each side of the track to hold it in place. When I first received the set, I did set it up without putting the clips on very quickly in a temporary spot just to try it out. It will run reasonably well without putting in the clips, but it did seem like the track wanted to separate without the clips. I think you could really only run it clipless on a very small track for a short period of time.
Once you attach the clips, the track becomes very solid. You can have a 4 or 5 piece section of the track that is a very firm, you can pick it up as one unit. It has a nice rigid feel - it feels very weighty and very substantial, not at all like a kid’s toy. But, being that it’s rigid, I would wager that stepping on it for instance (if you have it set up on the floor) would be a bad thing. It would probably damage some of the tabs.
The only piece that I wasn’t totally enthused about was the guard rail attachments. Everything else, like I said, has a very solid and well connected feel when it goes together. The guardrail tabs tend to slide around and seem to come off very easily. They could be a little bit tighter fit. On the other hand, they look very cool when attached, especially along with the red and white striping on the edge of the turns.
The cars are pretty nice. They aren’t quite as detailed as 1/32nd scale cars, but they are a little nicer than I expected. They have some very nice detail elements. The police car has working police lights, which is very cool. The Corvette actually has a blue light underneath it that lights up as it goes around - the car has a clear bottom, and the light is inside.
The cars are very powerful on this track. For a track this small, you can’t really open them up without shooting them off the track. With the turbo button on the controller (I’ll talk more about this in a minute) you can pretty much remove the car from the track at any location just by hitting that button.
The police car has a higher center of gravity than the Corvette. I haven’t done much racing on the set yet (just a few laps with my girlfriend), but the cars definitely feel a bit unbalanced with an advantage going to the Corvette. I prefer stock set cars to be a bit more closely matched than these.
On the default layout, there doesn’t seem to be a distinct lane advantage.
The controllers are interesting. The feel of the plunger is a little stiff, but I was able to get decent control out of it. It obviously doesn’t have the feel of a good aftermarket controller from Parma or similar. But it does have the interesting (slightly gimmicky, but still fun) turbo feature. According to the manual, the plunger takes you from 0-70% power, and the turbo button is 100% power. On this particular set, I can use the turbo button coming out of one of the turns toward the straight away for a split second tap - any longer than that and the car doesn’t have time to slow down by the end of the straight and make the next turn. But it seems like it definitely gives a significant burst of power. On a track with a long straight away it would probably be a lot of fun.
Final Thoughts
For just under $50 (about the price of one good 1/32 scale car), I got a very nice full set including everything needed. The 1/43 format is nicer than I expected, feeling more like 1/32 than HO (although I haven’t tried ripping out the magnets to get the cars to slide yet!). I’d definitely recommend this set if you just want to check out the 1/43 format without a large investment. And, when Carrera Digital 143 comes out this track can be used with a digital set to build a bigger layout.
Buy Carrera Go Police Chase now on our Amazon store.
Carrera Go Police Chase
Posted by John on October 7, 2008
I’ve been wanting to check out the Carrera 1/43 scale slot car system, so I just ordered a little starter set - the Carrera Go Police Chase
It should arrive by this weekend, so I’ll let you know what I think next week. I’m curious to see how the Carrera quality carries over into the smaller scale.
If you want to try it out yourself, it’s only $47 on Amazon
1/24 Carrera slotcar track rennbahn retractable slotracing
Posted by John on October 4, 2008
What a great system! Slotcar track on cables, retracts to the ceiling. This is a great space saver!
“My system pulls 8 cables back to a traveler. Hanging the track is the best thing I ever did to make 1/24 scale model car racing even more enjoyable.”
Duration : 0:2:2
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basement slot car drifting
Posted by John on October 2, 2008
in the dark corners of an old basement, nick and i drift slot cars. they are 1:32 scale carrera slot cars, and they are a bit difficult to drift (not like the cars that can turn 360 degrees, ot like the easy drifting 1:43 scale ones. these are bigger and harder to drift, and they fall off often). the song is the tetris theme, korbeiniki, by ozma.
Duration : 0:2:18
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Carrera Digital 132 Slot Car Race
Posted by John on October 1, 2008
This looks so cool…great passing in a 6 car race with 4 ‘ghost cars’ and automatic start sequence
Duration : 0:0:51
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